


Tenacity: A Traveler's Dissertation on Distorted Truths and Separation Anxiety

by Rhinocio



Series: The Homeworld T Series [4]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Nonbinary Ruby, Origin Story, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 11:03:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4664151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinocio/pseuds/Rhinocio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garnet, through the entire Homeworld year in which she has existed, has been in hiding. Status as a fusion is a reveal that would cost her, and Ruby and Sapphire's, lives. But the grand path of destiny that so escapes her future vision has plans to bring her secret identity into the blaring light, and though she tries, there is no protection from its trials or the haunting poisons of her past that accompany it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tenacity: A Traveler's Dissertation on Distorted Truths and Separation Anxiety

**Author's Note:**

> First and foremost, this massive fanfiction would never have happened without the crazy amount of support and love this fandom's shown my other stories, and for that I primarily have to thank [Jen](%E2%80%9Cjen-iii.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D) (and her hype, haha). You've been my most dedicated reader and online friend, an absolute joy to talk and joke with, and a fucking genius for patching plotholes and creating headcanons. Plus, you made the absolutely gorgeous covers to these fics. The T Series is as alive as it is because you threw yourself at it full-speed, and there's no amount of wording that could express how weak your support (and art) makes me. You excel at what you do and your boundless enthusiasm convinces me the stupid amount of effort I have to put into writing is worth it. Thank you so much for being you and taking time to have fun with me. It means the world.
> 
> Following that, bless you, [LJ](%E2%80%9Cleonarajourney.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D), for being my ESL beta reader, and thank you, truly, to everyone who drew, wrote, cross-stitched, designed, composed, and animated works for this series. You're all phenomenal, and your generosity brought me to tears more than once. Having such a talented and excitable following has made me want to try harder, which is probably half the reason this story is so long. Bless you all for being as kind as you are. I hope _Tenacity_ meets your expectations.
> 
> As per always, I use they/them/themself pronouns for Ruby. Most readers are aware of this by now, but I chose to do so before _Keystone Motel_ confirmed their use of she/her/herself. Disregarding preferred terminology isn't a thing one should do, but at this point it's become second nature and would throw off consistency if I were to revert to canon. Ru exists in my stories as a representation for all the non-binary folks out there, and their pronouns have been chosen for personal reasons. My decision is in no way meant to be masculinizing or otherwise alter your perception of the character – please love this little queer space rock in whatever way feels best to you.
> 
> Also, as clarification of a timeline and the headcanon I couldn't quite articulate in this story: a Homeworld year is 87 cycles long, but each cycle runs about the same speed as a day on our planet does. (The gem planet has two moons, and orbits one sun, with a larger celestial body blocking out the light for most of each cycle. Thus, Homeworld days are shorter than its nights and its calendar terms are measured by the sequential rotations on its axis and not its sky's light to dark ratio.) The space between _Trial_ to _Trouble_ and _Trouble_ to _Tenacity_ total two Homeworld years, or 174 Earth days.

Garnet's third eye was a liar.

Most of the time it gave her normal vision a distracting interference of mottled colours and lights, hazy but irritating, like background noise in a wailing stone transmission. Unnecessary but difficult to shut out, it was a whining beacon that called for her attention but then had nothing to present. Out of nowhere her bonus sight would snap to match what her regular two eyes were seeing, giving everything around her a bubbled, almost four-dimensional look. Sometimes she thought her vision was sniggering at her when it happened, going, “Look, the back of that gem is technically the future; let's try to see it while they're still facing us!”

Then, least often but most alarming, completely without warning, she would see possibilities. The gem soldier with the red hair and dress could step towards her and speak, or they would walk by, or they might trip and stagger into her boot, and from there they could holler at the entire bridge that Garnet had kicked them, or they would look up and fear her, or they would laugh, and there was a chance an officer would walk in during the exact moment one of those happened, but not if they had decided to speak to the topaz making their way to the main hub of the ship, where she might relay to a pearl instructions to change the course of the flight... but they might stay on course if the commanding pilot had conversed with the officer in the hall beforehand, which would stop the transport from tilting the minute amount that had caused the gem to fall into her in the first place. The amount of options available, slapping her senses in fractions of a second, were overwhelming at best.

Thank the stars she'd had the sense to cover her face with a band of opaque metal (though it had been for a different reason, originally) – Garnet was sure she looked like a lunatic with her eyes bugging out of her head, and that was before considering she had a spare.

No, for all the strengths her birth had gifted to them – Ruby, Sapphire, and she herself – her grip on future sight hadn't been one of them. She couldn't summon it at will, or decide which potential was most likely to happen, or focus on much else when a vision struck her, which had led to quite a few awkward glances from other soldiers in her squadron. Perhaps it would just take practice. Garnet prayed daily to the cosmos (and what heathen gods of other planets her constituents could recall) that she would survive long enough to learn to control the talent. Though she had so far existed more cycles than any other fusion, or any other new gem flying solo, for that matter, every moment was a possible trigger for her doom. Future vision, being as disconsolate as it was, didn't help the anxiety of the unknown. More than once Garnet had sought out a small room in which to hide, wrapped her long arms around her knees, and rocked, trying to soothe the uneven pulses of her gems with quiet murmurs of, “We're okay. I'm okay.”

She gave herself those moments to focus on the past instead of the unsure present; her memories, built from two separate bodies, were safe and solid. Though not always pleasant to remember, she knew the outcome of past struggles: a fusion. Herself. A body built with care and trust, a forbidden relationship that had offered two gems an acceptance the universe had never otherwise shown them. Comfort welled up inside of her when Garnet pressed her forehead to her knees and transported herself through the recollections, the sea of her curls barricading away the outside world. When she allowed herself the negligence, tucked away in a dark solitude in those unpatrolled storage closets, sometimes the fusion could smile.

“Ruby!” Screeching much louder than was safe, but so absolutely overwhelmed with joy that volume awareness had been disregarded, Sapphire ran, layers of her skirts pillowed in her arms. One of her shoes was coming off. A thick strand of hair was sticking to her lips. The last rays of the second moon were dipping beyond the skyline and making the ground in front of her ridiculously hard to see, but the blue gem couldn't care less. She wove amongst the abandoned spires and dilapidated buildings of the Old Walls, jumping chunks of stone that had crumbled away from the structures built aeons ago, when Homeworld had been first established. In the fading starlight they appeared a ghostly blue, and Sapphire felt like she had joined them in inconspicuousness, her skin and hair melding with the colours so her frantic movement across the earth would appear to any possible onlookers as nothing more than a brush of sand caught in a dry breeze. Her gem hammered in her palm, as irregular as her breath. Above her, two tiny lights shot towards the planet, burning up in its atmosphere.

The dawn set the ground on fire in the same moment Sapphire turned one last sharp corner, and she nearly collapsed with awe of the being standing before her, arms crossed and posture strong. Searing golden light blazed along the tight curls of their hair and broad shoulders, highlighting their features so theatrically Sapphire had to wonder if they'd made plans with the sun beforehand. Ruby was their own beam of intensity, their expression set, a stone more beautiful than anything the blue gem had seen in her short life and radiating confidence. Or, at least, until they turned, saw her, and burst into tears.

Laughter peeled across the wind as they went weak for one another. Sapphire tripped over her loose boot and fell into Ruby's trembling arms, her fingers reaching wildly to pat any part of the red gem she could, assuring herself that stars, yes, this was real, this was happening. Though they had seen each other not even a full cycle prior, and though in that time Ruby had touched more intimate spaces in her than she'd even known existed, every breath between them felt like a new experience, raw, unfamiliar, and blessed. Tears fell haphazardly onto her head, twinkling across her hair and dampening the mountains of tangled red and blue cloth that had piled between them. Gasping through her giggles, Sapphire grabbed her partner's cheeks and pressed their foreheads together, repeating their name and letting the warmth of it turn her tongue numb. Saltwater from Ruby's eyes stained her gloves unendingly.

“I watched the ship take off,” the red gem fumbled, words tumbling so quickly from their grin that they began to slur, “The one to Zhypar. They didn't even notice I was gone, Sapphire! I don't know what you did, but I followed your instructions to a T and the stupid registrar pearl didn't even notice my number on her screen. I don't think I was the only soldier missing, either!” The blue gem stroked their face, nuzzling against the pert nose that had scrunched up in delight. Mild panic fluttered in her stomach, and her brain systematically listed everything she had had to do to make escape safe for the two of them: acquire her personal file, with Ruby's secretly tucked into it. Record their “deaths” on the awful wailing stone she'd been designated as an archivist. Distort the recording. Destroy the files. Compress parts of their bodies – Ruby's bloody tooth, a handful of her hair and the nail off her pinky – into two cold blue tablets engraved with their serial numbers, so the scanners in the Halls would register that yes, the two defective corundums had in fact been powdered and compacted just like every other deceased gem (may the universe smile upon the fluorite who had let slip that flaw in the system). She took a deep breath, uneasy but assured that she had exercised their plan flawlessly.

“Did anyone go looking for you?” she asked, and the waver of Ruby's grin confirmed her suspicion. A swirling storm of fear built in her gut, kicking at her nerves in the same way the hot wind of Homeworld's default weather disturbed its earth. Her hands traveled across the red gem's uniform, searching for damage; specks of orange had been thrown wide across their chest and collar, and she fidgeted with the stains, rubbing them with the ferocity of her discomfort. “Ruby, did anyone _hurt_ you?”

“That doesn't matte-”

“It does! Are you alright? Who was it? Did they follow you?” The red gem grabbed her shaking fingers and clenched them tightly, shaking their head. She looked up into the fiery glare of their crimson eyes and swallowed, her frayed nerves reaching for assurance in the stare. This hadn't been easy on either of them. Nothing had ever been easy. Their need for one another on its own was a danger, but this lunacy, this series of events they had thrown into action, was beyond illegal and could so quickly become their downfall that every second they remained in the sight of other gems made Sapphire want to scream. Being a solider had been frightening. Working as an archivist had made each cycle a trial of articulation and poise. The decision to sever every bond she had ever built, lie to every faction to which she had ever belonged, and to string together a web of deceit so fragile that the slightest accident could mangle it was outright suicide. Tears fogged her vision as her anxiety took a chokehold. Ruby stroked her hair.

_But I couldn't lose you._

“Nobody followed me, okay? It was a couple of quartz. I kicked their butts – and I didn't use my gauntlet,” Ruby added quickly, when Sapphire started, “No evidence. I mashed their gems into a crevice in the blue spire wall. They're gonna have a hard time getting out of there when they reform. We've got lots of time. They didn't know where I was going. Heck, Sapphire, I don't think they even knew who I was. You've seen what big gems are like; those slugs were just looking for someone to pound on.”

“That pearl should have marked your absence, Ruby,” the blue gem admitted, taking a shaky breath, “As far as the Halls know, you died off-planet. There's going to be a discrepancy. Someone's going to notice. We need to get away from here. Fast.”

Large palms grasped hers, and the facets of their gems clinked together in a quiet crystalline kiss. 

“The transport leaves in three hours.”

“Garnet's going to need to run, then.”

The feel of the sand under her boots, scalding hot even in the early morning, and the echoes of her laughter, delirious with fright but so immensely pleased, danced within the fusion's memory. She tangled her fingers together and pressed the jewels in her palms against each of her eyes, letting the calloused skin that surrounded them absorb her tears. She sniffed, sighed, and then stood, brushing her hands on the tight fabric of her suit. The door glimmered out of existence with a hiss, and Garnet diffused herself back into the throng of Pink Diamond soldiers like a shadow, her expression bland and three puffy eyes blocked by a wall of shade.

“Just the gem I wanted to see,” came a hard voice from behind her, and loathing settled into her stomach as vicious as acid. Garnet tapped into the coldest parts of her corundum mothers and her body adopted a stance not unlike the patient coil of a winged Eritian serpent, poison at the ready. For all that the universe had allowed her in kindness, it had seen fit to present to her one last cruel irony before her departure towards the Milky Way galaxy, and this commander was it. Garnet had seen familiar faces in the throng of gems waiting to board Pink Diamond's vessel; no gem had ever beheld her, and though her hearts screamed – Ruby, especially – Garnet knew she could invoke no deserving action on this hateful creature without revealing that she had not, in fact, been conjured from the earth as every present soldier had. Never had a façade been so important to maintain. She had wanted, of course, and dreamed spitefully of all the pain she could inflict, being no longer two defective nobodies but one large, powerful fusion. The gauntlets she could summon to her hands, stronger than diamond and tipped with flesh-rending points, roared for the taste of green blood. But even one harsh word to Seraphinite would mean the discovery and death of everything she was.

“You ever been to Hasehput?”

Garnet shook her head stiffly, the fingers of her left hand twitching. Bright emerald eyes gleamed at her from under a wisp of colourless hair, and thin lips, painted black, gave her a nauseating smile. Their skin, so unlike the smooth, deep tone of her own, looked sickly, and was spattered with scales. Thin arms crossed in front of a weedy torso, which bloated awkwardly from the hips into two massive legs, rooted to the floor as though they had been grown from the metal of the ship. The fusion clenched her jaw, biting down on the tongue that dearly wanted to curse and distracting the body whose muscles were poised to strike. Bile frothed in the back of her throat.

“I've never been to this galaxy.” Lies came easily to Garnet's lips, weaving through her teeth like the reaching wiry noses of Vinotiran natives. She was more than familiar with the quadrant of space they had been flying through, because less than forty-nine lightyears away emanated the scalding heat of a white dwarf, and around it orbited the hateful planet from which Ruby and Sapphire had grown. Nausea twisted her insides as the images of red sand flashed through her mind; a phantom of excruciating pain cackled at the memory of ribs crushing inward, their enemy so much taller but still just as ugly. The green gem smiled, oblivious to the rage burning behind Garnet's glasses.

Ruby had done their research; almost a year had been dedicated, however subconsciously, to gathering information about nesosilicates. Since the moment she had first been created, temporarily born from blood-red light and a tearful dance in a liquid completely foreign to her species, Ruby had needed to know – feigning as much disinterest as possible – what, and who, Garnet was. The sole gem had no secrets, but garnets _plural_ were creatures that until the cycles after their time on Thaqqion Ruby had never known existed. Oh, but what a realization! As the plan evolved for her component gems to fuse and flee Homeworld, so multiplied the information about a planet deep in the Andromeda galaxy, where garnets were, indeed, mined. Seldom were these gems brought to Homeworld; why waste the energy when they were destined to be used for conquests in the opposite direction? They were classed as melee soldiers, used on the frontlines of aggressively-defended planets. Their high-graded hardness and size gave them distinction in battle, though it was rare one ever attained a ranking outside of field work; a gem grown for assault had no reason to trade weapons for wailing stones.

This had created a tricky loophole in Garnet’s made-up story. Why would she be sent, alone and without consult, to Homeworld, only to loop back around her birth planet towards the Milky Way? Sapphire had become panicky when this was brought up, and had paced the illuminated purple curves of her office until the second moon had pulled almost all its light away. Time had not been on their side; even as she and Ruby danced, the fire of the morning streaking across their bodies as they became one person, they had been trying to come up with a solution. Garnet, luckily, knew just what to say.

“Commander Charoite believed I would be of personal use to you,” the fusion had declared, staring into the pink eyes of her new leader, her bow hardly more than a tilt of her massive hair, “I have abilities, though imperfect, that may be valuable in your first excursion to another galaxy.”

“We’ll see about value. Defects have been cropping up more often than they should be in gems from Alamandine – how certain is the commander that your ‘ability’ isn’t just that? I can only assume she’s boot-kissing. I would have appreciated a little more forewarning, as well. We hardly have the room for extra recruits, especially nesosilicates of exceptional size.” There was a pause, and time had seemed to slow around Pink Diamond’s face as her sour expression melted into one of mild shock. She had glanced back at Garnet, her head barely moving. “How did you know this was my first?”

The fusion had grinned.

“Never been to this galaxy, huh?” Seraphinite scoffed, “I heard from Topaz you’d been sent on this mission before you’d even seen Japthee. It’s not like Commander Charoite to throw away garnets without testing them on that backmineral space rock first.”

“She saw no need to test me,” Garnet said coolly, her fists clenched. _And neither should you._

“Guess not. You’re the biggest red rock I’ve ever seen. Some reason Charoite didn’t keep you as her bodyguard? She’s got a hell of a lot of swords pointed at her back, the damn kiss-up.”

“She thought I’d be useful to the Pink Authority. Did you want something, Seraphinite?” The name burnt on her tongue, the taste so foul Ruby would have equated it to slug feces. Though she had tried to walk away, the green gem had persisted, casually knocking soldiers out of the way as she traced Garnet’s careful dance around the bodies. The thrumming steps of her giant feet pounded against the fusion’s skull, drilling in the reality – _you can’t escape me._ The gem in Garnet’s left hand, the one she’d chosen to leave open to the world because Sapphire’s had too unique a cut, trembled with fury, and she traced her fingers around it, feeling intolerably exposed. Damn the universe for its unnecessary malice. Damn this stupid green creature.

“Here’s the thing,” Seraphinite said, and gripped at her arm. Garnet went still, feeling as though she had been smothered. “Pink Diamond’s got me going down to Hasehput in a couple hours to pick up some samples. The planet’s basically lifeless, so she told me to choose a small and mobile team, but like hell am I going to travel with half-pints when there’re big gems like you to pick from. You get your butt to the loading dock once we get into orbit. I get a warrior on my side; you get to see something besides Alamandine and the inside of this stinking ship.”

“What if I refuse?” Seraphinite narrowed her eyes.

“You want to tell a diamond ‘no’?”

As much as she had no desire to fight a diamond, Garnet admittedly would have liked to question one. The earth of Hasehput, she realized quickly, was useless for a Kindergarten. The atmosphere was thick with ammonia, and a sickly yellow colour that reminded her uncomfortably of the Vinotiran mainland. Her pre-landing report had informed her that the center of this planet was metallic, liquidized hydrogen. There were evidently few animals living topically, and the hard, compacted ground held a tangle of plants so thick that Ruby and Sapphire, being lighter than she, could have walked along the top of the ferns without falling through. This celestial body was extremely flammable, difficult to navigate, composed of one of the most common gases in the universe, and stunk. Being as Pink Diamond’s authority was centered on building mining sites for new gems, Garnet had to wonder what had happened to the giant rose-coloured leader to have her insist they spend valuable time and resources digging up shrubs.

Maybe there was a reason she’d been sent offworld.

“Sir! These specimens have fantastic foliage, but I… may have cut the roots too short. Are they still useful?” Garnet turned curiously when the question received no response, and was met with a strained, almost eager expression. Orange hands, patterned with yellow dust from the wind, held two large plants aloft. Grey earth crumbled off the messy remains of their bulbs. She stood, and the look on the smaller gem’s face wavered uncertainly.

“I’m not your superior,” she corrected, “But I think they’re fine.”

“Nothing's useful without its legs.” A sneer snaked between them, and heavy footfall rattled the earth at their feet almost as much as Garnet's nerves. Seraphinite's spindly fingers snatched the plants clear out of the orange gem's hands and tossed them into the woods, nearly striking a jasper on the way. The tiger's eye balked, shrinking away from their commander's massive shadow. “Dig deep before you cut anything, you clod. Did you not listen to the briefing? Pink Diamond needs these samples whole.”

“Yes, sir!”

“I've seen organics with more lustre than that, honestly. Garnet,” the sound of her name off Seraphinite's tongue made the fusion shudder, and she swallowed thickly, smothering the sounds of protest that begged her to pound their misty green jewel to dust. Behind her glasses, the red gem closed her eyes, allowing herself a small respite from her ugly stare and oddly persistent lip twitch. “You're with me. Squadron's splitting up. There're a couple of locations we marked years ago deeper in the forest we've gotta check on.”

“Got it,” she murmured, and bless the stars, for a moment, Seraphinite left her alone.

Her size was intimidating, of this Garnet was sure. Ruby's research on nesosilicates had confirmed as much; she was abnormally large for her gem type. It was understandable, she thought, because she was a _fusion_ , not just a garnet – she'd been created out of the light of two gems, and her body was powered by their adoration of each other and of her. Confidence built on that emotion allowed her an imposition that made other soldiers uncomfortable; the band of metal over her eyes and the tight purse of her lips, both frightened to speak and say the wrong thing and unconcerned with verbalization (because what need had Ruby or Sapphire to talk to anyone but each other?) had covered the rest. This was both a fortitude, because no one save Seraphinite bothered her, but also a problem, because it meant she was always mistaken for a leader.

Thus Garnet was positioned at the front of the line of soldiers, and had an optimum visual on the forest. Each cut she made at the twisting tendrils of a vine allowed her time to muse; the soldiers behind her moved in silence, afraid to distract or irk her. Her constituent gems had had their shares of expeditions to other planets; as a scout, Sapphire had been an initial visitor to many places the Diamond Authority decided to claim, and within a patrol squadron, Ruby had maintained order in locales Homeworld had successfully conquered. They were no strangers to investigation or the bizarre variety of organic life found outside of their mother planet, but Hasheput was quickly becoming one of the weirdest either had ever seen in terms of foliage. The sour atmosphere of this world allowed little sunlight through to the plants, so their leaves were a sickly yellow instead of the deep greens and reds of flora on places like Eritia. Garnet saw no flowers save the deep bowl of something that held putrid-smelling liquid and had pink serrated edges. As her blade sliced through the bark of a willowy shrub, thick goop splattered across her hand, golden and gleaming, as if the plant had bled. Seraphinite made a disgusted noise from just behind her, and her arm spasmed sideways, hacking pointlessly at the remains.

“Is that it?” she asked, gesturing with the point of her sword, and the green gem grunted in confirmation. A high cliff of grey, smooth to the touch, curved in a sharp semi-circle around a tiny clearing, allowing just enough space for their squadron to stand. Vines tumbled down it, their hairy appendages gripping like miniscule teeth to the stone. Bizarre feathery spheres grew sporadically amongst the rock, quivering in the wind, and a muscular blue gem to her left sneezed as one of the balls of fluff crumbled and its downy seedlings tickled their nose. 

“These are new,” Seraphinite scoffed, bemusedly jabbing at the spores. Someone passed along the golden circlet that had been left in the clearing to mark the location, and Garnet tucked it into her glove.

The moment the beacon touched her skin, her vision warped. Multiple separate possibilities battered her sight at once, blaring for attention, and Garnet scrunched her face, trying to follow their sequences. They scattered like ripples in water, stemming from one event and then intermingling in an indeterminable dance; the more she grasped, the more tangled they became, until the fusion gave up control completely and let herself spectate. Red eyes. Or were they pink? She would summon her gauntlets, and there was blood? No, that yellow sap. They might have to flee – from what? Gem shards at her feet – they were blue. A familiar blue. Stars, _no_ , whose shards were they?! Brute force. Grey stone. The mottled words of a conversation, and yelling, and someone with a very lean body underneath her hands. Garnet ground her teeth frustratedly, begging the visions to disperse. Her breath thinned in her chest, anxiety pounding it against her ribs. The decision to leave Homeworld and live as a fusion had taken its toll on her abilities as a seer; not only did her constant, nagging fear disfigure the visions, but it was so new to her that she had no idea how to make them stop.

For all she knew, she was still trapped in one.

Alarmed wails gradually filled the air around her, and Garnet clutched at her ear, shaking her head. A shrill voice called her name. The ground rattled with movement, and she staggered, blinking, as a body shoved past her. Someone yanked the sword from her back. With an irritated cry she shoved a hand under her glasses and scrubbed at her third eye, and her vision began to clear.

If only the world around her had done the same.

Thank the suns of ten thousand galaxies that Sapphire and Ruby had both spent so long in the field learning to react to danger; Garnet had dodged backwards before she had fully realized there was a threat. She gaped as her attacker became clear, and summoned her gauntlets quickly, her gems hammering. Battle instincts rose up within her like a wave, filling her arms with strength she normally had to suppress, but fear had taken a death grip on her elbows and pulled her down. It was like trying to move through mercury; her eyes told her the challenge was easy, but her body struggled for every twitch. Garnet staggered to the side and watched in horror as her opponent lunged away from her and into the gut of a citrine, its giant limbs crushing their gem on impact. They had hardly had time to scream. Sparkling dust painted the cliff face behind them, and as the creature glared once again in her direction, the fusion gagged.

No one had told either of her source gems that their species could regenerate – it was a true blessing of the universe that the action was instinctive. For a while after they had been pulled from the ground, and the dry air of CR899 had slapped their facets, half-buried in a pile of their brethren corundums, Ruby hadn't even known they could form a bipedal projection. The loud voices of commanding officers that had rattled every square of their cleavage told them it was so at the same instant they realized; the newborn gem had, upon constructing their body, been so excited that their vigor had charred the sand under their feet. For a few brief, wonderful moments, hair spiraling in the breeze and grin bright enough to rival the sun, Ruby looked their stout figure over and was immensely proud of themself. They had skin with a colour deeper than the gems around them, vibrant and warm. An iron core and chest that was flat enough to never get in the way of their movements. Thick, strong limbs with wide hands that giddily pushed through the dirt, entranced by the patterns they could make. The radiation of the sky sizzled at their back, and Ruby refused its intensity with a spine of red crystal, as rich and pure as the gem in their palm. They were lovely. A single tear dripped onto their scrunched nose, glittering with delight.

Their happiness hadn't lasted more than an hour, and neither had their body. It had been an unfair fight, and a voice deep inside of them knew it, but hadn't made it past the red gem's indignation soon enough to prevent their defeat. Ruby had felt the moment they died – their ribs had shattered. Something in their hip had collapsed. Breath had rushed from their lungs so quickly it had taken their gem pulse along. The facets of their vertebrae became fragments of an explosion, burying themselves deep in places they were never meant to explore. The red gem heard one last sneer before their vision dissolved, and it planted inside them a vicious seed of degrading self-worth that, once they rebuilt their tiny body, would try to strangle them from the inside out.

Irony, Garnet realized, was a powerful magician. It held no friendships and maintained no loyalties. It saw every motion of the universe, and weighed every influence on an ethereal scale, judging without bias. It had seen the cruel growth within Ruby, and it had found a place to plant another.

Her eyes were mottled, as if clouds of madness had made a home behind the irises but something like sanity was crying through the fog. When she roared, Garnet could see a grey film that coated her tongue and throat like the undying grasp of barnacles to a ship's hull. Her movements were erratic, jerky, and more uncoordinated than the whole of her being had ever displayed, even with her massive limbs. Every gasping breath was a wheeze, heavy with congestion. Fluff from the plants on the rock face stuck to her chest, but it wasn't a optical illusion of their closeness that made her green gem almost white. Her arm spasmed. Her lip twitched.

Seraphinite.

Emotions were at war in Garnet's head, and jigged around her constituents' shared minds with fervor. She couldn't place the disgust, alarm, or pleased spite that filled her on any one person; she, and the two small gems that screeched inside of her, were all afraid. This was wrong. Seraphinite deserved it, a quiet, cruel part of her argued, but this was disfigurement as none of them had ever seen, and that had no reason to exist anywhere in the universe. This was no mutation - gem corruption didn't leave a body recognizable, or alter the source of their life. It wasn't a trick, because the crackle of jewel shards under Garnet's boots were sharp in her ears, and the pieces hummed with fading vitality. Stars, and though she wished, it wasn't a vision of the future, because the fear pounding through her body had kept her third eye in present tandem with its sisters. This was an event the fusion had never thought was even possible to occur in a mineral like herself, because gems didn't have the organic processes to allow it to function: sickness.

Her breath caught as Seraphinite lunged, her thin arms raking out with alarming speed. Garnet jumped back, using the wide spine of her gauntlet to block, only to stumble into the unyielding shield of the cliff. Feathery spores glided upon her carelessly, paying no mind to the battle, and she saw half a dozen of them silently shredded as the green gem's claws thrust towards her, adopting a handful of her curls in their move. The sick sound of their nails on the stone was an opening act to the jarring symphony of their legs, those monstrous limbs that had once mangled Ruby, and Garnet yelped as she leapt free of the heavy strikes. The rock where she had been standing crumbled into sheets, its dust coating Seraphinite's mad expression with a delicacy unfit for her rage. Five times already Garnet could have died. Cold sweat condensed on the back of the fusion's neck, their treks like icy fingers along her spine.

It was Sapphire who shoved Garnet's panic out of the way and filled the space with tactical sense – they were going to die if those legs made contact. The deep holes in the rock wall illustrated as much; if Seraphinite could so easily crumble what must be granite, then whatever infection had grasped her hadn't made her hardness a vulnerability. The senseless thrashing of her attacks, in fact, could be making her stronger in exchange for her own bodily protection; one of her fingers was tilted at an angle that suggested she'd broken it. Seraphinite was nearly as tall as their fused form, and her legs caused a majority of that height, so even her one apparent weakness – her gem, its pulse at her chest vibrating so intensely Garnet could almost hear it – would be difficult to reach. They didn't have a ranged weapon, and they were barely fast enough to evade. Ruby screamed the solution as Seraphinite jumped towards them, and the fusion reacted just soon enough. _Run!_

Something infantile welled up in Garnet as her boots hammered the hard-packed ground, ripping up miniscule tangles of vines with each kick. Her fists trembled as her arms pumped her forwards, and a gasping sob fell from her lips as she latched onto the trunk of a large tree and breathlessly whipped herself around it. The quick tempo of her dash made a beat for the song of her emotions, and the words whirled in her throat without lungs to power them. Since the moment the two little corundums that made her had been born, nothing had been easy. They were tired of trying. She was tired. Oh, gods of the heathen worlds, she was so tired. Garnet was hardly a year old and likely the eldest of any fusion to ever exist, but pride could find no seat in the fear-packed space of her heart. Instead, exhaustion was settling within her like the ghostly cloud on Seraphinite's gem. A part of her, growing with every increasing thud of the monster at her heels, wanted to unfuse and give up. The fusion swore as her hands clenched their gems of their own accord, begging her to stay – the desperate need of her consciousnesses and her own naive hope wouldn't let her disappear.

Claws scratched at her ankle just as Garnet jumped a ridge of stone, and she fell headlong into a pool of ferns, shredding them and the earth with her momentum. Her arms gripped wildly as she tumbled head over heels, knowing death was imminent if she took a second too long to escape. Seraphinite roared above her, sounding more animal than gem, and the fusion, for a surreal moment, wanted to cry her name and beg her to control herself. How evil was the irony of the universe to make such a moment possible?

She called a gauntlet to her hand and swung ferociously as she righted herself, spitting dust and blood, but the fist found no contact; her opponent, in fact, seemed to be struggling to move. Mere inches lay between the range of their limbs, and Garnet hesitated. She could escape now, in these precious moments of opportunity, or she could attack, and strike down this nightmarish horror that bawled at her with unseeing eyes. It was only when Seraphinite broke free of whatever had held her and her grip slammed into Garnet's throat that she realized her foolishness.

They stumbled backwards, carried by the green gem's force, and the world around her became a furious whirl of faded colours as her dark glasses shattered. Dusty yellow plants, thrown in chunks to the breeze. The deep red of her curls, swarming around her like so many spiral-shaped insects. Wisps of white hair clogging up her every orifice, serpentine servants to the gnashing teeth above her whose black lips had cracked and bled green. Behind the frantic struggle of her arms and the pounding of her head, Garnet was vaguely aware of the careful creep of objects long and stringy. As if charmed by some omnipotent force, they slunk through the gaps in Seraphinite's limbs and began to tangle. A thick wrap around the shoulders, loops around the arms – a virtual forest of ensnarement. Then they reached for her.

Her future vision chose that moment to work flawlessly. With a laugh, it told her that she was going to die. Seraphinite thrashed, and the entangled creatures bled gold upon her.

A single terrified gasp fractured into two, and Garnet ceased to exist.

Sapphire screamed. Ruby attacked. Yellow liquid drenched them as the latter's fist ripped past the vines and into the monster's face, shattering teeth. Enraged scaly arms tore free of their restraints and pounded the earth around Sapphire's body, broken nails frantically clawing at the flames that Ruby's strikes had ignited. The red gem's gauntlet, so much smaller than Garnet's, found places the fusion's bulk couldn't have reached, and let them slip a hair's breadth away from certain doom. With a raw shriek they launched themself at the sea of white serpents and took an iron grip on Seraphinite's neck, their body swinging dangerously. She writhed. Dirt and coloured spray splattered across the air as they wrestled, agility versus uncoordinated brute strength. Rage had built up within them, blended intricately with terror, and the two emotions let loose a power Ruby had never felt outside of fusion. The world was nothing but noise and motion, a blinding blur that demanded death before surrender.

For a frightening second, Ruby was thrown free, and as they hit the ground, legs like tree trunks tried to crush them. Unfriendly nostalgia snuck behind them like a blade and stabbed the air from their lungs, leaving them petrified in the wake of a massive green heel. A frantic shout was their salvation from the assault; like a bullet, Sapphire's tiny form was upon the creature, hacking at its stabilizing ankle with a vicious iron weapon. Electricity lit the ground and crackled through her hair as she screamed their name over and over, begging them to come back to reality.

“Ruby! Ruby! _Move, Ru--!_ ” Her voice cut short as a ropey arm whipped to the side and slapped her body away. The red gem felt magma flow through their arteries, pure loathing sharpening their vision and freeing them from their nightmarish memory of the last time they'd fought this villain. Crimson light burnt across the left side of their body, and as they lunged at Seraphinite, so did it combust their skin. Anger howled through their throat, bringing with it a taste like copper and a rush of flame, and their lips sparked as their breath exploded, coating their shirt in ash. The green gem bellowed in pain, her flesh curling as it immolated.

Limbs flailed through the smoke in an agonizing dance, as if they were mocking the yellow vines that continued to move, undaunted and of their own accord, around the battle; the tendrils grasped at their ankles, but incinerated as they touched Seraphinite's burning clothes and the murderous heat of Ruby's skin. Raw screams slashed through the air as the green gem struck blindly, her body too possessed with destruction of its enemy to protect itself. Wisps of black drifted like morbid silk past Ruby's frantic dodging as their opponent's long white hair frayed upon itself and crumbled, and the red gem gagged as their fist met soft, melted flesh, but Seraphinite thrust towards them as though the flames that had rolled across their body were gentle kisses. She was a gem beyond reason, or sense! Panic began to flutter in the back of Ruby's mind as they accepted this, and realized that Sapphire had disappeared.

This was it, then, they thought, stumbling onto their behind as Seraphinite's arm bashed them sideways. They were going to die – whilst fighting, damn it, but it was an inevitability with this mindless monster they were trying to take down. Garnet couldn't gain an upper hand, even with all her strength and nimbleness, and she was more than Ruby could ever be alone. There were no other gems around to help; some distracted part of them had logged away locations of fifteen broken crystals as their fusion had run from that small stone fjord. Ruby rolled to the right and tripped upon standing, their foot becoming quickly encased in flora – if Pink Diamond knew about these vines, they swore, then may the darkest black hole in the Andromeda galaxy eat her, because the red gem would never get the chance to punish her themself. A swift glance around solidified their internal surrender; Sapphire – oh, Sapphire! – wasn't the azure jewel on this disgusting landscape she should have been anywhere they could see, and horror that stunk of future vision numbed Ruby to the green foot that cracked into their shoulder and sent them sprawling. _Gem shards of a familiar blue_ , they mouthed soundlessly, and the heat of their body evaporated their horrified tears before they'd barely been born.

Determined vines crept across Ruby's chest and grasped furiously; full roots from the earth burst through their yellow covering and snared Seraphinite's mighty legs as they charged, chortling, _nothing's good without it's legs!_ The very planet even hated them, the red gem thought bitterly, and felt their core cooling with the wave of apathy that had drenched their body. Seraphinite bellowed as she fell onto her chest, her spine arching. Tawny ribbons tied them both like angry whips, ever tighter, but Ruby could hardly care. Garnet was gone. Sapphire was gone. There was nothing for them alone on the vessel going to the Milky Way, because without those two gems their life was more insignificant than a pearl's. The universe could do what it wanted with them – it had already taken what mattered.

It was then that the universe, for all its callousness, shouted its most infuriating, vile, and vicious insult in Ruby's face, and slapped their resolve back to life by enveloping them in a blanket of blades. Pain blared across the red gem's body like frigid water, waking and shredding their every nerve. White light blinded them and tore a breathless scream from their throat. Though moments later they had collapsed against the yellow earth with their lips kissing sickly grass and skin prickling with agonizing intensity, Ruby felt renewed. Everything hurt and everything sucked, but bless the stars of Aries, they knew that pain. They'd felt it once before, when the world was dark and someone had first called them beautiful. Exhausted joy trembled past their lips and mocked the roar of agony from the green gem behind them, and Ruby fought to stand.

There was something to be said for defects and compassion, the red gem decided, when they propped themself up on shaking knees and saw Sapphire, her body in an awkward sprawl, begging the disfigured mass that had once been Seraphinite to stop struggling. Thick, earth-encrusted roots bound the commander's limbs like diamond shackles, and vines became the long cascade of hair that no longer graced her back. Green blood glimmered next to blackened skin. One eye leaked saltwater, as if some sanity deep inside her body was in despair. Ruby felt the tiniest flicker of pity in their chest.

“Seraphinite, please,” Sapphire called, her right hand grasped tightly around the far end of the vines that strung the green gem down and her sharp knuckle iron crackling with energy, “I don't want to shock you again. You need to control yourself!”

The monster roared, and their jaw snapped maliciously in the blue gem's direction. There was a moment's pause, then Sapphire bowed her head. Electricity burst down the vine. Seraphinite screamed as she dissolved, lit with thousands of volts.

If anyone had ever bothered to ask Ruby the time, they would have been sorely disappointed. They were bad with numbers (because they'd had to teach themself), and speed, to them, was relative to the amount of action in a given period. To the stocky gem, the minutes after blue lightning had zipped through their frame could have been full cycles, and they would be none the wiser. For what felt like hours, the world was made of blotches. For minutes, colours swam across Ruby's eyes, accented with the fluttering of miniscule white stars. But it was mere seconds before they realized someone was screaming their name and frantically tugging at their cheeks.

“Ruby, Sundrop, _please!_ Look at me!”

The blue gem spun before their eyes, her face too close to make out details and skin coated in soot. Her hair hung wild around her, and tumbled upon their face like tattered lace. Cerulean, as deep as the shadows of the mountains on Homeworld and as silvery as its second moon, swam at a distance they couldn’t perceive, blocking out the anemic tone of the clouds far above. Ruby smiled weakly and allowed their eyes to relax, drinking in the colours of Sapphire’s body. She was so lovely. She was alive. She was probably sitting on them, but their legs were numb, and there was nothing in any facet of their crystalline form that had the ebullience to move. They were hardly aware of their eyelids flickering shut until the leaner gem began pulling them open.

“I’m sorry, Ruby, look at me, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

“Why do you keep doing that?” they murmured, squinting tiredly up at her, and as her forehead pressed against theirs, Sapphire’s panicked cries faded into relieved whimpers.

“You’re okay,” she repeated, the gem in her palm pounding against their cheek and fingers shaking as though they had carried the world, “You’re okay, oh, thank the stars, you’re alright. I thought I’d killed you. I didn’t even- oh, _Ruby,_ I completely forgot the vines were touching you too, I’m so sorry!”

“Don’t cry, Sapph,” the red gem moaned, scrunching their nose and attempting a wiggle of their fingers. Something between Sapphire’s frantic words and the force of her head against theirs prompted a want to stir; the longer they laid against the disrupted earth, the more they began to notice the foul-smelling smoke that hung around them and the deep vibration humming through their core like a gong struck too hard. The very atmosphere in that moment felt like it were dying, its vitality being absorbed and manipulated into the evil of the planet, and the more Ruby sat still, the more imposing its vice. Besides, they had to deal with the defeated commander's gem.

“I'm not crying!” Sapphire snapped, and Ruby's vision whirled as they were yanked upwards until their body pressed against the blue gem's chest and air was squeezed out of their lungs. Trembling arms gripped their uniform tightly, ripping what was left of the charred vines away, and lips buried themselves against their hair. Ruby's shoulders tried to lift their limbs but failed miserably. “I'm just... exhausted, Ru. I want this to be over.”

Wind howled a quiet, sinister cackle through the ugly yellow shrubs around them, and a cool weight settled into Ruby's stomach like a paper-thin sheet of ice.

“Sapphire?” they edged, their voice almost a whisper, “You know this isn't ever going to be over, don't you? There's no freedom for us, even once we get to the Milky Way. Garnet isn't an escape pod, she's... who we have to be from now on. Maybe forever.”

“I know. I saw.”

“Garnet never had a vision like tha-”

“No, Ruby,” Sapphire murmured, and her fingertips tangled gently in the curls at the nape of their neck, “ _I_ saw. I had visions. Of the planets we might land on, of gems we're going to meet, or could meet, and someone with delicate fingers, and... and Pink Diamond was in many of them, Ruby, and there was a moment where I was sure I had lost you, because I was kneeling in the Chapel, and I couldn't move my arms, and it was just like that vision Garnet saw, only it was _me_ with the destabilizer pointed at my chest, and so many pairs of gold eyes looking at me, and- and I could only tell them it was _worth it_ because you- but you were-!”

Sapphire's voice cracked and crumbled like the fragile sheets of granite Seraphinite had destroyed, and the red gem pushed their head under her chin, cooing the best comfort they could with their limbs unresponsive. Shallow breath tousled their curls as Sapphire curled around them, her trembling hand stroking their neck. Ruby knew all too well the discomfort future vision could cause – it was fickle and indecisive, alluding to so many possibilities without offering ratios of chance. Often, what Garnet saw never came close to truth, but scared the trio daily, for one gem created enough potential; three had so many solo and intertwined futures that prophesy became a mental minefield. They could, at least, find comfort in one another when the fusion's augury became too much, but Sapphire had struggled alone.

“I don't know,” she said, before the question of “how?” had even fully formed on Ruby's tongue. They swallowed. “Nobody's ever fused for so long. Maybe... maybe Garnet rubbed off on me.”

“Is that even possible?”

“You've gotten stronger,” Sapphire countered, and the red gem glanced up at her, face scrunched and disbelieving, “Ruby, she hit you. Four times. You should have at least broken something, but you're only bruised.”

“I'm also covered in three different shades of blood,” Ruby used their head to gesture at their clothes, where it appeared as though a painter had gone berserk. Among the blue, green, and red of the combatants, thick yellow liquid had pasted itself to their breast, looking for all the world like Vinotiran plasma. This realization buried its cruelty deep in Ruby's brain, padlocking its being in assurance that it would never slip across their tongue; they knew as well as their partner that Garnet had fallen apart because Sapphire had been deceived. The yellow sap wasn't blood, but revived horror in the blue gem had convinced her it was, and terrified her enough to destroy their fusion. Sapphire had confessed once that she had unpleasant history with the planet of Vinotira and its worm-like inhabitants, and perhaps the vines had been reminiscent of their long snouts, but that her fear was so deep-set that it had killed Garnet... they would never bring that up.

The fact that she was avoiding their eyes told them well enough that she was ashamed.

“Why do you have to be so stubborn?” Sapphire groaned, and she sat back enough to grab at their arms; Ruby's limbs flopped uselessly as she jounced them, slapping life back into the shocked skin. “You're more durable than you used to be. She kicked you four times - I was there the first time you two fought, and you didn't survive one sh-”

Her jaw snapped shut.

“You saw that,” they said slowly, voice cracking over the petrified silence. Sapphire clawed shaky fingers through her disconcerted hair and refused to look up.

Given the choice between the deep, nauseating green everythings of Thaqqion and the wheeze-inducing air and insanity of Hasehput, Ruby couldn't decide which planet they loathed more. Both had potential and sure desire to haunt them, and both stunk so badly of their own essences and pain that it would be a blessing to their moons to redirect their orbits into the nearest black hole. When finally they could stand, their skin still resolutely tingling, the red gem took a moment to decide whether they had the energy to reignite their hands and burnt the whole place down. If they were lucky, they might even find a cave or crevice that led to the hydrogen core of its ugly cosmic body, and could give it the spark to blow itself up. The thought comforted them when commiseration for the creature that had given them the first boot – literally – down the vicious slide of their life refused to let them rip their gem apart fracture by lamellar fracture. Sapphire had started towards them, hand outstretched, the beginnings of words buzzing across her lips to plead with them not to destroy the commander, and then stopped abruptly when Ruby jabbed a red sphere around the misty green gem instead.

The sound of her hand slapping her forehead was unmistakeable, however, when they brutally drop-kicked the bubble deep into the forest.

“Let's go home,” said one, or perhaps both of them, and sighs and fingers tangled as intricately as the starshowers of Homeworld, lit with the radiance of their gems. Sapphire's knee hooked around their leg, her hand caressed their side, and as they spun ever faster, a laugh choked between them, overtaken by the delight that Garnet always brought. The same feeling that had prompted Ruby to sneak into the Archives those eighty-seven cycles ago and beg the blue gem to stay with them welled up in their throat, still as indescribable and potent as it had been in the glow of that Homeworld night. They hugged Sapphire closer, their foreheads touching, and let the burn of the emotion mingle with the light of their fusion.

Water, as Ruby was familiar with it, was warm, and either fell from an alien atmosphere in droplets or gurgled to the song of glimmering red stones. The shot that lanced between they and Sapphire, though, and sent them sprawling in opposite directions, while as fluid and thick as that liquid, was cold. Cruelly cold. It was as though a force had grasped and thrown them apart with frozen hands, atomizing the air between their blending forms in the same way Sapphire could, only she lay as dazed as they. Both gems searched the woods frantically for the source of attack; as Ruby pulled themself to their knees, a large body trod from the foliage and glowered at them. The icy feeling – now dark with fear – frosted their core. Before them stood a woman four times their size, her hand gripped tightly around Seraphinite's bubbled gem, lips in a line so finely pressed their colour had bled away. A large shield, transparent and glimmering, seeped the same cool energy that had shot them. Sapphire audibly gagged.

Homeworld help them.

“Who are you?” Pink Diamond demanded, her voice silencing the very planet; the wind ceased, and not a single branch in the yellow trees dared so much as twitch. Ruby could feel their legs trembling, the crystals that composed their internal structure powdering before the might of the angry gem. The cogs of their brain ceased to turn. Time stood poised, waiting for a reaction. The diamond had no such patience. “Answer me!”

“Garnet!” Ruby barked back instinctively. The pink gem's eyes became narrow slits, twinkling with sub-zero temperatures that her warm-coloured irises should not have allowed.

“I know who you were _becoming,_ ” she hissed, biting down on the word as if it made her sick, and Sapphire whimpered. “But that is not what I asked. Where did you come from? What Authority allowed your passage onto my ship? _Who are you?_ ”

Garnet would have seen possibilities. As broken and fresh as her future vision was, it could have quickly given them options. Dare they run? This awful planet could never be a home. Could they fight? The diamond was powerful, and harder than they, and commanded an entire squadron a mere ten thousand kilometers above Hasehput. Would they ever see each other again? Tears began to gloss the red gem's vision as they recalled what Sapphire had prophesied on her own – solitude, with Ruby's death foremost and her end by way of gem destabilizer. What harm could answering do? They clutched the jewel in their palm, silently begging their fusion's forgiveness, and opened their mouth to speak.

In the same moment, Sapphire screeched, and launched herself at the diamond with terror-spiked speed. Lightning crackled across her arms, and the blue haze enveloped her body, morphing her into a streak of brightness. Alarm was indistinguishable on Pink Diamond's face as she tilted her shield to block the assault; the blue gem ricocheted before she'd even made full contact with the barrier. The thrum of its power vibrated into Ruby's very center, declaring ownership, and stole their voice as they tried to scream their partner's name. Sapphire skid to the left, and the larger gem was upon her before she'd even lifted her head.

Ruby sobbed an answer the moment Pink Diamond's massive palm enveloped Sapphire's gem, but she remained unfazed.

“I recognize you,” she murmured instead, hoisting the blue gem by her arm; Sapphire flinched, her free fingers grasping wildly, trying to tear her right hand free. The diamond stood, holding the smaller gem aloft as if she were no more than a hooked fish, thrashing her death throes before the hungry gaze of a hunter. Her cold eyes turned to Ruby, their body shaking wildly, and frowned. “Both of you.”

“You told- you assigned us t-to squadrons-” Sapphire was gasping, tears running a sweet freedom down her face that her hand could not; her fingers were turning white. “After you w-atched us sparring in the H-Hangar!”

“You were the sapphire who could fight,” the diamond hummed, sounding mildly amused, and something almost akin to a smile flitted across her lips. Sapphire nodded frantically, and upon watching, the larger gem's expression suddenly turned grim; she grasped her captive's chin. “Show me your face.”

Anger bubbled up in tiny spaces within Ruby, dodging the ferocious grip of their petrification. They knew already they were dead – the diamond was all but playing with them, her strength far beyond what they could fathom – but there was a limit to the indignities even they, traitors to Homeworld and the fusion ban, should have to suffer. Though their lungs were weak with the punctures of fear, they sucked in a breath, and shouted, “Don't do it, Sapphire!”

“It's fine,” she whispered, sniffing wetly, and shoved her fingers through her bangs, tearing every strand free from her face. Her single eye glared furious, damp defiance at the larger gem, and Pink Diamond started, her grip coming loose. Even as she crumpled to the ground, Sapphire stared, her gem hand cradled close to her chest. She growled.

“Defective,” the diamond snapped, and shot a glance back at Ruby, “Are you, as well? Is this your reason? You would dare... _fuse_ to rectify your basic flaws? For symmetry?”

“Of course not!” Sapphire spat back, slamming her fist against the dirt, startling Pink Diamond once again, “We form Garnet because we want to! We- I need her! I need Ruby! It has nothing to do with something as- as simple as- we're not _using_ each other!”

Something hysterical deep in Ruby's brain sighed: _we really need a word for this._

“I should destroy you here – fusion is an illegal act! You would endanger your lives, our mission, and my leadership... you would lie to my face, you would expose an entire squadron to your sick intermingling, and you say it has no use? No application? You would stoop to such indecency and you have no reason? I don't understand!”

“You wouldn't,” the red gem sneered back, warmth bleeding into their throat. Sapphire's retaliation gave them strength. Though Pink Diamond still stood proudly, large arms still bearing her massive shield and voice stern, her misinterpretation of their need for one another began to shrink Ruby's fear of her. Of course, they thought, she's young. She's already powerful. She's perfect. She's never had reason to crave anyone or anything. But she was not without weaknesses.

“You need our fusion still,” Sapphire said, her voice steeling and hand clutched against her sternum, “If you destroy us here, your troops will be asking where one of your most powerful soldiers went – how a tiny, backmineral location could take her out. She was rising in your ranks, and you had intentions to promote her to captain. You would forfeit a prime warrior.”

“The other Diamond Authorities are going to want to know how you lost some of your strongest fighters on an uninhabited planet,” Ruby continued, furious glee building flames under their tongue, “On your first trip away from home. Your first time in charge. Do you know what they'll say? Do you know what the galaxy ahead holds? Are you confident in your decisions? Neither of us alone can see the future, and you still desperately want a seer.”

Pink Diamond glanced between the two of them, her eyes widening the tiniest fraction.

“No commander has ever lost a beserker-class nesosilicate outside of a full-blown war,” the blue gem continued, and Ruby caught the slightest twitch of an evil smile cross her features, “Word will get around of your failure. Excuses could be made, but try to return with us separately, and we'll ensure the whole squadron knows you let a fusion slip under your nose for an _entire year._ ”

“We didn't see what happened to your commander,” Ruby lied, finally, gesturing at the bubble that housed Seraphinite's gem – the diamond had no idea how sentience in a fusion worked, after all, “If you want answers, you need us alive and fused.”

“You need Garnet,” both gems shouted, their voices echoing into the stern accent of a third, and Pink Diamond visibly flinched. Time took a slow, anxious breath. Her cool eyes bore into Sapphire's as her weapon melted away, though the muscles that had held it were tense. Her jaw clenched, and with a thick swallow, she nodded a reluctant consent. The blue gem staggered to her feet and dashed, half-backwards, to where Ruby crouched, her eye locked on the large gem. Only when their hands met did she relax and turn to face them; her lips quivered, vision pooling with fresh tears. They sighed in unison, and Ruby grasped her cheekbones, pressing their faces together.

“It's okay,” they murmured, “We're okay.”

“Ruby, Ruby, Ruby,” she replied, a reflection of their last night on Homeworld, “Fuse with me, Ruby.”

They danced. Their movements were fluid in ways the water of Thaqqion would be jealous of. Sapphire's hair, pulled loose from its tie, spun in a wave around them. The gleaming colours of their uniforms' insignias, remnants of their life before fusion, melted from their bold yellow and blue into blessed pink obscurity. Their hips pressed together, turning tight circles, and Ruby clutched the leaner gem so dearly their lips brushed; the contact broke only when they dipped her, letting the curves of her body cascade across their arm in a position more vulnerable than anything their military training would have encouraged. Their gems shone fearlessly, and their hands pressed into one another, hiding the facets from Pink Diamond's view – her expression, Ruby was delighted to note, as they took one final glace towards her, was nothing short of extremely offended.

The world became warm, and white, and beautiful, and then there was Garnet.

To say the trip back to the rescue transport was awkward would be a vast understatement. Though her face forfeited no emotion, the diamond had summoned her shield the moment the fusion asked her to lead the way, and walked more alongside than in front of her, so as not to expose her back. She glared when Garnet assured her she had not intentions to harm (though, admittedly, Ruby's fury did momentarily prompt her to want to call forth a gauntlet and strike out, just as a warning), and marched with her chin notably held aloft, as if asserting her position. The tables, as was said, had turned. Intimidation was a mild difficulty when one's opponent had embarrassed them and stood less than a foot shorter, after all. Garnet smirked, gripping her gems tightly, and, as she watched the diamond warp Seraphinite’s bubble away, thanked the universe for her constituents' bravery.

Though their walk was raw with silence, something like surprise had glazed Pink Diamond's features when the fusion detoured from their linear trek back to the basecamp, and suspicion creased her forehead when Garnet bashed through the foliage and led her to what was left of the circular channel where Seraphinite had gone mad. The once pristine rock wall had become shattered rubble, and the seedlings of the strange fluffy plants who had claimed home there had scattered across the earth, dusting what was left of fallen gems like a sea of cotton. Garnet bent to collect the fragments and pooled them against Sapphire's hidden jewel. The pile grew steadily.

Behind her, Pink Diamond seemed impatient; her great feet shuffled constantly, arms folded over her broad chest. Wide curls, cascading down her back, bopped her shoulders in an aggravated dance. Garnet took an intentionally long time to blow dust off the tiny chips of a tiger's eye and the leader scoffed; the fusion cradled the shards and stood, turning to stare. The sheet of metal that covered her eyes glared the diamond's haughty expression back at her.

“A life is worth nothing unless it's yours, is that the problem?”

Colour flushed Pink Diamond's cheeks. Several times she made to speak, but her lips gave forth no sound. She had never been spoken down to, Garnet realized, brushing the white fuzz on the ground clear with her foot, then kneeling to gather up a large chunk of quartz. With exception, perhaps, by another diamond, this gem had no knowledge of cruelty or disregard. She had always been at the top of the proverbial ladder – unquestioned, unabused, and never treated unfavourably. She had no worldly perspective, and no empathy for those that had never known her privilege. Garnet's sentiment on the leader grew increasingly less impressed... and, suddenly, all the more intrigued.

The diamond squatted beside her and grasped the cracked body of an iolite, considered it, and then quietly began a pile of her own.

“What intention did you have for those plants we were gathering?” the fusion asked, face casually turned away but curiosity burning. There would hardly be another time she could interrogate the gem leader directly and without interference, and Ruby's oath to slay her for knowledge of the vines still held true. Her fingertips scoured the earth for the remains of her squadron, though with distracted touch; seedlings brushed underneath her gem and prickled at its surface. Pink Diamond pursed her lips, and Garnet nudged a jadestone towards her, its side fractured but host potentially living. “I'm sure the dead and damaged would appreciate a reason for their sacrifices.”

“That information isn't fit for you,” the larger gem sneered, “Nor them.”

“How fast are you?” came the stark reply, and the view of the diamond's confused expression, snapping sideways and then alarmedly to the gem standing above her bemused Garnet into lifting her glasses so her heterochromatic irises bore down their displeasure. The fusion cocked a hip, and stared, unblinking, at the horror that blossom on her leader's face as she spoke. “I ran from the Old Walls on Homeworld to your ship's loading dock in twenty minutes. We're four kilometers from the transport, if I remember correctly. You do the math. How many gems are directing that vessel? I'm one of the strongest soldiers you have - how quickly could one of those pilots be intimidated into broadcasting a message to the mothership? How long would it take you to catch up and stop me from informing your entire command that I'm a fusion? I imagine you drill procedure into your troops with an iron hand – would they delay in sending that information on to the Homeworld? Would the Diamond Authorities find pity in their cores to forgive a member who let a fusion hide under her nose and escape with one of her transports, and who stooped to empathizing with lesser castes?”

(Ruby quickly noted that said plan wasn't actually too bad; Sapphire shut down the idea with a reminder that they were trying to avoid being hunted by the all-consuming wrath and gunpower of Homeworld, and transports had very thin shields. The vote went two to one.)

Pink Diamond's pride flared as suddenly as Garnet's patience had snapped, and she stood quickly, dropping the gem shards she'd held as though they burnt her palms. Her hair seemed to swell in size as the muscles of her body clenched. Their faces nearly brushed, but Garnet stood firm, her expression bland. The diamond's fists crackled and squeaked in the fabric of her thick gloves. Her lips curled, face fighting to hide the worry that had built up in her eyes.

“You'd be performing your own suicide,” she hissed, finger pointing at Garnet's chest.

“Let me be honest,” the fusion deadpanned, teeth bared, and tore her glasses free, releasing her third eye, “My entire existence is a suicide. I have seen eighty-seven cycles of my own potential destruction, and on each eve of the new I behold a hundred impending deaths. Your threat frightens me much less than my future vision does, O Diamond, and I would think that as wise as you are you would trust me when I say this: that foot-race would have only one winner. The Authority does not allow for weakness. I would see another day of suicides, and you would not.”

Garnet almost heard the soft shattering of confidence inside the larger gem, and took the sound as her cue. Mirrored metal slid back over her glare, and she boldly bent at Pink Diamond's feet, scooping up the discarded crystalline fragments the leader had thrown. The commander remained frozen in place, dumbly watching the fusion move, and blinked only when Garnet built a quiet red sphere around the assorted colours of the fallen. The silence between them arced across the curve of the ugly planet, as sickly as the shades of the flora.

“Why did you want those plants?” she tried again.

“Organic manipulation,” the diamond whispered, as if in a daze, “On Earth.”

“Earth?”

“Richest source of silicon in this subsection of the galaxy.” She shook her head slowly - the fusion and her counterparts became mildly entertained at the evident internal conversation the individual was having with herself, and Sapphire laughed, _you have no idea._ When she had apparently steadied her thoughts, her voice had gained strength. Pink Diamond squinted, and quipped, “Would an all-seeing fusion not know that already?”

“If she were so inclined to think about it, perhaps. Did Yellow Diamond ever show you those blueprints she'd promised before your voyage began?” The quick reminder of her prophesies startled the diamond back into submission; helplessness flashed across her features. Intimidation had become a sly weapon concealed in Garnet's throat, and the bitterness that had battered her since her birth insisted she employ it with no holds barred. Sharp coolness bled through her core, though it was not Sapphire's hands that made it so, and encouraged her inquisition. “What do you mean, manipulation?”

“Can one of you not breathe fire?” the commander murmured, her insult at their fusion not unnoticed. Garnet paused to consider her words. True, both of her constituents had elemental powers. Sapphire had gotten the longer end of the metaphorical stick, with control over the very energy of the air around her; electricity had been the primary gift, but temperature had followed quietly, perhaps in necessary contrast to Ruby’s control over fire. But whilst their abilities were rarer than the knack for conjuring weapons, they weren’t unheard of. Both corundums had known other gems who could shock, burn, or freeze. Elemental conjugation was another notch in the belt for high-ranking officers, and a potential lead into a better life for lowly gems, but defects saw little improvements in their lives for the talent. Garnet frowned. Reason stood that someone as important as Pink Diamond would have any kinetic control advertized, either due to rumor or for intimidation, but she had never heard such talk. In fact, she couldn’t imagine what the commander was referencing.

“Do you breathe organic matter?” she retorted, swallowing a cheeky smile. It was as though the universe was bestowing upon her an opportunity in this diamond; a chance to vent her stress in a useful, if potentially self-destructive, way. The likelihood of their conversation backfiring and quickly dooming her increased with every word, for there was always the chance Pink Diamond could snap, disregard what her crew would say, and crush the fusion into the ground in a millisecond. But momentarily, Garnet let her youth reign her better judgment. 

“I can move it. Influence its growth. Exploit what potential it might have,” the diamond scoffed, folding her arms. “The foliage here had potential for biological assault, given the right training. It’s hardly as savage as fire, but more precise and accepting of hegemony.”

“The vines,” the fusion said, startled, and quashed Ruby’s muttering to the back of her mind, “That was you.”

“I’ve yet to see a planet whose plant life attacked visitors of its own accord – yes, it was I. You were going to die, and I would have liked to keep at least one of my stronger soldiers.”

“You clearly haven’t been to many planets,” Garnet mumbled, offhandedly bemused at the diamond’s inexperience. Even on her trek into the forest here, the fusion had seen carnivorous flora. The bowl of foul-smelling liquid with serrated edges she had dodged – that was meant to attract smaller creatures, and was probably poisonous. Vinotira, the yellow planet Sapphire hated so much, was rife with barbed roots that protruded through the earth and could tear through the boots of gem troops with the slightest misstep. Eritia, the gentlest and largest of worlds her constituents had been to, had its own threats, in the form of massive trees whose leaden bark rotted without warning from hundreds of feet above the ground, and fell with enough mass and speed to form craters in its grass. Once, Ruby had seen an entire tree topple, and the deep thrum of its contact with the earth still hummed in their ears from time to time. Homeworld itself had its share of organic threats, though Pink Diamond would never have gone far enough outside the city to experience them.

“As for the plants, they were for testing during our voyage. Is this information sufficient for your curiosity, _fusion?_ ” 

“My name is Garnet, _diamond,_ ” the nesosillicate snapped back, swallowing the zip of fear that shot through her body at the commander’s expression, flushed with indignancy, “You had no problem calling me by it until now. But yes, it is. Thank you.” She paused, her voice softening. “For saving their lives.” 

It was as though someone had flit through the glade and silently snipped the tense threads of their battle for dominance; Pink Diamond deflated, her head tilting the slightest of degrees and eyes searching Garnet’s face. The trees dared once again to whisper their language through the breeze, and the lingering smell of burnt flesh reappeared before the fusion’s nose. As though mimicking the proud posturing of male beasts during breeding season, the gems stared at each other, neither attack-ready nor relaxed. 

Whether the interruption of their soundlessness was a good or bad thing, Garnet couldn't decide. 

“My lady!” came the shout of a thin voice, and both gems turned, startled. Through the dense yellow brush arms appeared, followed by a tuft of hair the colour of Homeworld's sunsets, both completely negligent of the path Garnet had already cleared. Pleading eyes beneath the facet-free gleam of a white gem peered up at Pink Diamond as a face broke through the branches, and the owner stumbled gracelessly into the clearing, without pause to clean the planet's debris from her suit. A glimmering transparent vial trembled in one of her hands, clutched close to her chest. 

“Pearl,” the diamond acknowledged, and her attention for Garnet all but faded away. The tiny gem dashed to her commander's side, bowing her head in a movement so slight the fusion flinched; rudeness from pearls was never well-received. But instead of striking out, Pink Diamond seemed to soften. Her hands once again folded delicately before her, and her shield dispersed. “What is it?”

“Forgive me for leaving my post, my lady,” she began, and the diamond waved a hand dismissively, “But I was analyzing the soldier you'd sent back to the transport – Seraphinite, I believe – and I knew at once I had to find you! The cleavage of her gem was contaminated! A biological agent seeped between the fractures, like a moss, almost, and pulled water from the surrounding atmosphere into her gem's imperfections. Not only were the energetic connections within her gem being interfered with, but she was slowly being hydraulically corroded!”

The air around them seemed to fade into an ill, orange darkness, and cold shiver ran up Garnet's spine. The very idea of being incrementally eaten away at from the inside out, in one's most pure and vulnerable core, was abhorrent. She folded her hands under her arms, soothing the uncomfortable pulses of her gems with the somewhat calmer rhythm of her respiration, and asked, “Slowly?”

The pearl turned to her, curtseying and murmuring a demure, “Sir,” before explaining, “As I understand, the organic material that poisoned her had been in place for quiet some time. It had thick roots at the seam of her projection, and,” she shot a hesitant glance at Pink Diamond, “was comparable in genetic makeup to many of the other plants we've collected from this planet.”

“Did the contamination stem from one of our samples on the main ship?” the diamond asked, and the pearl shook her head quickly, long fingers jittering on the bottle of liquid she held.

“No, sir, which is why I rushed to you. Hasehput was the initial source, but the microspores that compose the infection weren't here in large quantities during the last expedition, which is when Seraphinite must have come into contact with them. I believe they might be an invasive species. The commander's exposure had been small, but the speed with which the spores multiply reacts to gem energy. The strength of a soldier directly impacts its rate of growth! My lady, please, I urge you,” the bottle was presented, carefully cradled, “I found I could cleanse my own early exposure with hydrochloric acid. I brought enough to decontaminate at least a small squadron. I... I feared it might have found hold on your gem.”

“I hardly think-”

“We're infected,” Garnet whispered, the words driving cold knives into her throat. Two sets of eyes locked on her, one concerned and the other suspicious, as she glanced quickly around the clearing and lifted one boot free of the sea of cloud-like seedlings below her feet. The feathery spheres bounced carelessly around her, giggling innocence, and she clutched her hands closer to her ribs. “She said these were new.”

What little colour the pearl's face contained drained free of it; Pink Diamond's expression hardened. 

“How quickly does this spread, Pearl?”

“I-I'm not sure, my lady. Seraphinite's infection would have begun two years ago, minus a cycle or seven. I would mathematically assume a growth of four millimeters every twenty-one cycles. But her exposure was much less-”

“We touched these,” the fusion hissed, her constituents' panic bleeding past the walls of her usual calm. She swallowed thickly, gripping the cloth of her uniform. Far past the tense argument of three separate voices in her head, Garnet heard Pink Diamond snort.

“There's no need to be so dramatic-”

“We _touched_ these!” she shouted, thrusting forth her palms for display. The gem in her left hand dared not gleam, though it refracted the dawning realization on her companions' faces. From a place no longer deep in the fusion's mind, Sapphire gasped frantically, distressed of their situation. The scale had very drastically been tipped back in Pink Diamond's favor – Garnet was at her mercy, her blackmail defunct. She needed the bottle the pearl held, for she had had direct contact with an excessive amount of the spores. Her right gem had held the many fractured bodies of fallen soldiers, whom themselves could have been infected. Left alone, Garnet would very quickly become a mimic of the green creature she hated so much; she'd been exposed to much more of the organism, and had two gems' power to feed it. Ruby wanted to strike and run, but this pearl had more than obligation tying her to her commander, obviously, having endangered herself to come to her aid; to attack her for the vial would incur the diamond's physical wrath. Likewise, a pearl would sacrifice herself before she let harm come to her diamond; if Garnet revealed herself as a fusion, the tiny gem would convince Homeworld that she had discovered the treachery and deserved punishment, not her leader. Garnet's future vision denied her entry, and her constituents were lost. Her fingers trembled, weak with anxiety, and the fusion cursed her own stupidity. Her survival very suddenly depended on the gem she'd spent the last hour insulting.

“Sir? May I?” came the soft lilt of the pearl's voice, like a trickle of dawn through the black shadows of Homeworld's night. Thin fingers hovered below her much broader palm, one with the vessel of acid held aloft. Garnet jumped, glancing frenetically between the diamond and her tiny servant; the larger gem had turned her face away, expression blank and posture unchanged. Nervously, she nodded. Tiny curls of her hair fell into the field of her vision, as if trying to shelter her from the pearl's soft touch. Her grip was firm but gentle, and unyielding in pressure even as Garnet's fingers twitched at the burn of the liquid. Her right hand clenched, still debating one whether or not to reveal the existence of Sapphire's gem, when Pink Diamond made the decision for her.

“Treat the other one too, Pearl,” was the command, laced with something that almost sounded like concern. Anger and relief battled within Garnet's chest as the small soldier turned, her already bright eyes widening. There came a feeling, indistinguishable by name but rent from the mortification of a _pearl_ looking her up and down like she were something dirty, that boiled nausea in her stomach and glazed her vision. Garnet ripped off the glove that hid her second gem and shoved the hand forward, clenching all three of her eyes shut. _There is nothing wrong with us,_ whimpered the tiny voice of her exhaustion, but the acid that dripped across her palm scalded the words into silence.

“-back to the transport, and treat what shards we collected there. Make note that this site has been compromised, and we'll move on with the expedition before the cycle ends.”

“Wait,” Garnet breathed, consciousness filtering back through the tired discussions of her corundum minds and nerves steadied, “We're leaving?”

“Unless you wish to reacquaint your gems with the poison of this place, yes, immediately,” said the diamond, already tiptoeing across the sea of spores, looking for all the world like a rose-coloured giant upon clouds. The fusion gently slipped her glove back on, giving Sapphire's gem a soft caress with her thumb before hiding it again from view. She took a tentative breath.

“There are still troops deployed,” she said, and though the pearl glanced at her, Pink Diamond seemed unbothered. “Our squadron was divided not far from here. There are gems collecting plants for you that could have been exposed to this. They don't know what's happening.”

“Then let us hope they've returned to the transport in time for departure,” the diamond sighed. Words tumbled from Garnet's lips, glittering with fury, before she had the wit to rein them in.

“A life truly means nothing unless it's yours,” she reiterated, and the larger gem glared at her, her pained gaze muttering, _how dare you._ “Go, run your important self back to your ship, leave a handful of gems loyal to you to die of madness. They're merely numbers on a tablet, replaceable. The Authority knows how to pick their members, obviously – your sense of value is twisted as your hair.”

“Your sense of worth exceeds your being!” the diamond snapped, hands clenched into fists. Her pearl trembled like a tall stack of leaves in a cool breeze, mouth agape, eyes like saucers blinking madly, unbelieving of the gem that dare insult her mistress.

“Then let my worthlessness work for you. Seek the safe haven of the transport, but give me time to find the other gems. Your pearl can assist me. She has enough acid with her to cleanse at least the majority of the squadron on patrol; I have the strength to overtake any that might have gone mad. If we haven't returned before the cycle ends, you've lost nothing.”

“Pearl, give her the bottle,” Pink Diamond began, her eyes glossy, but Garnet cut her off.

“I don't have to use augury to understand that's not charity; you would happily leave me behind and consider those lost gems a payment for my disposal. No, we go together.” She held back a sniff, emotions once again fraying. This had been the longest cycle of her life, and the compiling jabs at the diamond, instead of filling her with the dark glee they had before, had begun to rebound upon her as points of hatred for herself. The pearl was afraid, Pink Diamond was angry, and all the fusion wanted was to thank them for treating her infection and beg them to let her continue to live her secret. But she couldn't leave a squadron to die, not with the knowledge of how terrible and drawn-out their end would be. Garnet pressed a hand to her forehead. What she wouldn't give to reset the hours and continue with the life where Seraphinite harassed her, Sapphire's gem was unknown, and not a soldier among the masses spoke to her outside of necessity. “I'm sorry, but I need the collateral.”

The world was silent.

“She makes a valid point, my lady,” the pearl said finally, her voice delicate, but Garnet met a hard stare when she lifted her gaze, “As far from Homeworld as we are, it would be difficult to replenish our ranks; logic states an advantage to keeping those we already have. I will go with her, provided you seek shelter and cleanse your gem. Allow us six hours. We will return with the missing within this time, or have failed. Our mission could not continue without the grace of its leader,” she marched past Garnet, and as the ice of her words crystalized the air around her, the fusion heard the faintest of wavers in the sound. “But pearls can be replaced.”

Truthfully, it was more than the extra hands to carry a bottle that made having a hostage advantageous. The pearl had a knack for directions, and could produce a holographic map of the planet's surface with her gem. She knew the distance from the transport to each marked collection site, and the number of soldiers the entire excursion had been originally comprised from – given Garnet's knowledge of how many they had lost, the pair created a list of attendance. She had hypothesized, granted the number of gems in the squad and the durability of the plant life to be gathered, at what speed they would have traveled, giving them a radius in which to search. She was familiar, also, with many of the types of flora they encountered, and was able to instruct Garnet on which would be easiest to clear paths through. The adventure could almost be considered an amusing challenge, if the stakes weren't so dire and their conversations so blatantly clipped.

The awkward power struggle between them was hard not to laugh at, in a way, being a strange juxtaposition to the energy between Garnet and Pink Diamond – that had been a battle of size and control. Here, two beings beheld as tolerable, at the very most, by gem society confronted each other not on their own worth, but on each other's values. The obvious contrast between their body types and level of fighting ability meant little in their argument, because neither would see an advantage to the other's destruction. It was as though their debate were a challenge to see who could make the harshest point and rip the deepest emotional wound in as small a phrase as possible.

“You must be young – the perspicacity of your remarks to my lady reeked of immaturity.”

“A year this cycle. Your lady lacked the compassion to prevent that kind of comeuppance, in my defense.”

“I'm sure you meant 'in _our'_ ,” the pearl derided, and gestured sharply to the next set of branches to be felled. Garnet tore through the brush with ease, and they trod forward, tense silence poised for the next round. Something high above them chirped giddily, as if egging them on.

“Is your blind loyalty to that diamond a defect, or mandatory of pearls?”

“I would consider it proud, not blind, and hardly think a fusion has the right to question deficiencies. You're all asymmetrical, evidentially, and one has to suspect less visible errors in your formations to lead to this display.” 

“As if you've never known oppression for existing and sought an escape.”

“That's what this is?” the pearl laughed, cold and fake, “How many of you are in there? Does one gem control the body and another the voice? What oppression could possibly warrant a loss of personal identity?” Garnet froze, gauntlets clenched tightly at her sides. That had hurt. This entire cycle had hurt, truth be told, but denunciation of her life's validity by a pearl stung like so many knives to her psyche. Ruby and Sapphire whispered sweet reminders that she was their world, her own gem, and meant more to them than any cycle alone ever had or could, but their words crumbled like ash in the face of the disapproval of a creature so many castes below her that their very conversation should not have been possible. Smothered self-loathing all three of them had buried bubbled up from cracks in the cage of Garnet's confidence, and she took a slow breath.

“Two. No. The same kind that has you finding comfort by the side of one gem and unbridled hatred at the hands of all others.” The pearl's face fell slack, and her eyes suddenly turned away, scanning the forest floor as if she could pick up the fractured sounds of her snark and bury them. Sense told Garnet to move, but her emotions had leadened her feet, and a foresight much different than her prophesies implored her to wait for a response. The quiet, reticent murmur that followed their strained silence did not disappoint.

“What is it like?” 

Hesitance still locked her movement, but the fusion's voice streamed like a river, dotted with joy that her corundum parents so desperately wanted known: “Safe.”

“From what?” The disbelief was audible.

“Each of their fears. Their flaws. Loneliness. Violence wrought upon them because of their imperfections. Orders that would tear them apart.” She sighed quietly. “I live because of them, and they protect me. I'm never alone. I'm powerful because their light and their affection strengthens me. It's... an experience.”

“It's a threat to gemkind.”

“ _How?"_ Garnet spun, incredulous, her throat tight. “I am more than willing to serve under your diamond. Until today, there was no question of my loyalty! It was never my gems' desire to disrupt society, but to hide from its judgment and spare one another from death. What makes that wrong? The only thing truly threatening about fusion is that its employment is considered a sin, when it's the most beautiful thing a defective gem can behold. Perhaps it's not the act itself that the Authority fears, but the self-acceptance that comes with it.” 

The pearl trembled under Garnet's rage. Sighing, she pulled her visor free, and carefully met the smaller gem's wide eyes with the damp blinking of her own.

“We want to stay together,” the fusion said, “That's all.”

Perhaps if the universe had allowed them more time to talk, an understanding could have been built. Who better to comprehend the desperate need of the bond Ruby and Sapphire shared than a gem utterly devoted to her owner? There was, in a peculiar way, common ground between them, and questions had visually begun to form on the pearl's tongue. Her stare had morphed from one of hautiness to a mildly-disgusted curiousity, and her fingers had stretched towards the fusion almost pleadingly. There would be no further dialogue on the subject, however, for the body that slammed Garnet sideways tore the potential touch away, and the only sound the pearl's lips were able to produce was a piercing scream.

She would wonder, much later, when the threat of sharp, slobbering jaws gnashing at her throat had been neutralized, and the air, expelled by the hard clout of a tree trunk against her spine, was once again replenished in her lungs, if her future vision, should she prompt it, could see the twisted strings of fate that directed her life. Would they spiral out from each of her gems as options ad infinitum, or be bound into one thick cord, stabbed into the horizion and made hazy only by the illusion of choice? Would the sick irony that repeatedly punctured her wellbeing as claws did her leg be as obvious as it felt in its moment of its reveal? Could she have traded the poisoned gift of prophesy for a favour of the ever-tilting scales of her future to, for once, let the influence of an enemy be severed forever from her life? Garnet cried out, her body rolling away from the splintered wood, and cursed her third eye with blood-glazed lips as violently as her stunned brain could manage. Behind her, a monster roared, very much willing to rip her limb from limb, and her future vision hadn't thought to even mention the possibility of its return. 

“No- that can't- oh, stars!” the pearl's voice, sharp and high, hammered the air like a thousand shards of glass, “She was- I didn't even think she could- fusion, fusion! Please! Get up!” 

The crazed gem had taken Pearl's shrieks as an invitation and made haste for her, claws reaching and flagged with the fragments of Garnet's uniform. Fear had petrified the smaller soldier. The world was still skewed when the fusion stumbled back onto her feet and directly into a run, tackling Seraphinite's neck with her bare hands, and her weight carried them forward, the ground reverberating with their impact. Clumps of dry yellow grass flew through the air like unexploded fireworks, pitched towards the sky with the vigor of the larger gems' wrestling. Garnet gripped her own wrist, pulling Seraphinite's wiry neck into a choke, and struggled to wrap legs around her thrashing chest. Teeth ground into her arm, and though she knew the white infection that tainted them, could find no fear amongst the adrenaline and pain. She pushed her head against the earth, fighting for leverage, and shouted, “Pearl! Do something!”

“I don't know what to do!” the smaller gem squealed, posture hunched and arms trembling, tucked across her chest like they could block away the suddenly violent world. Garnet cringed, her left leg pressed under the weight of the green creature's massive foot, and squinted through her lashes. The pearl's lips were trembling.

“Your- ugh- sword!” 

“I don't know how to use it!”

“Your diamond never- aagh! Never shuts up about it! She says you can!”

“I'm artistically trained!” the lithe gem cried, agony palpable in her voice, and she dashed with a yelp out of her place as Seraphinite gained the upper hand, rooting herself well enough to throw Garnet before her. She took the brief second after impact to summon her gauntlets, and struck out at the body above. The green gem tilted a minute amount with the force, and Garnet tried to roll free of her shadow, but Seraphinite still had hold on her arm; the fusion drove the spiked tips of her gloves – Sapphire's contribution – into the joints of her fingers, and bolted away the moment she heard the bones crack. Seraphinite bellowed her rage at the sky.

The pearl had backed as far away from the larger gems as she could, though had interestingly not thought to run from their battlefeild. It was possible she realized that she would be the next hunted should Garnet lose, or fear had made her too stupid to attempt escape. Whatever the reason, and despite her protests, the fusion had decidedly been left with an ally. She tried again, her voice low.

“Pearl, please, help me. I need backup.”

“You don't understand,” she whimpered, eyes locked on the green beast, “I have no idea how to use a sword properly. I'm not a combat gem. We're shown tricks for entertainment, that's all.”

If she had not been so startled, and if her voice had not suddenly been yanked from her control, Garnet might have laughed. Irony, it was now apparent, came in two flavors: cruel and kind. When she had argued with Pearl before, she had been sure of her answers, and emboldened by their validity. She was her own gem, not a ship piloted by two. She spoke her own words and chose her own movements. She was more than the sum of her parts. 

Her parts, it seemed, had their own summations to make.

“I don't care,” came the words, rough in a way her own diction was not, and seething with fire. For the first time since her birth, the fusion became a means to an end – a vessel, not an entity. Suddenly, Garnet was a spectator in her own form. Alarm bubbled within her, but the soothing coo of Sapphire's apology softened the blow, and assured her that this was something she couldn't do. Not like Ruby could. “You're going to learn. Stand up. Unsheathe your blade.”

Pearl gaped, but her shaking hands obeyed.

“Watch her shoulders,” Ruby instructed, and pointed with Garnet's finger, “Keep your guard close. Aim for the largest muscles, her neck, and her hands. If you get the chance to strike her gem, do not hesitate.”

“But I-”

“We don't have the luxury of time. You fight, or we both die.” Behind the dark shade of her glasses, the fusion's gaze had locked, seeing, for the first time in Ruby's life, potential in a pearl. Their bias complained, but their observations could not be denied. “You're intelligent. If a defective, asymmetrical corundum could teach themself to swing a sword, so can you. I know it.”

Though the trade-off of their consciousnesses momentarily blurred Garnet's focus, none of the gems involved in her fusion missed the single thick tear that rolled down Pearl's face. Her expression hardened, and her thin fingers wrapped so tightly around the hilt of her sword their colour disappeared. Her bright blue eyes locked on the incoming charge of their opponent, and her sharp, steadying exhale prepared them all. 

Future vision commented offhandedly that someday, the pale pearl would be an amazing warrior. 

They split to either flank of the monster's gallop towards them, as agile as dancers. The smaller gem swung wildly at Seraphinite's huge leg, and as the mad creature twisted towards her, arms flailing, Garnet gave the side of her head a hard kick. Furiously she roared, spit flying from her split tongue, and chose the decidedly stronger gem as her opponent. The fusion barely dodged her charging form, and had to fall to her knees to avoid being scalped by her talon-like hands. White hair cascaded by like so many bleached whips; Garnet grasped a passing handful and yanked. Seraphinite fell backwards, but instantly reacted, arching her back and driving elbows into the earth to push herself up. The fusion jumped upon her before she had the chance. Hands struggled against each other, raking at eyes and tearing curls from her crown. Far away, Garnet could hear the scared (but determined) shouts of the pearl, and caught a glimpse of her blade slicing at the green gem's hips and gut. Whether her strikes were lethal, she couldn't tell, for Seraphinite's rage was sedated by nothing.

A thick arm caught the fusion across the stomach, and the force of the impact threw her. Pearl became the sudden target, and Garnet could see her cutting frantically at Seraphinite's hands, backing up as quickly as she could manage. The blade clipped through the green gem's open mouth, and viredescent blood splattered across Pearl's face as the monster screamed. A terrified moan echoed it as the tiny gem stumbled. Garnet galloped towards them, gauntlets clenched and praying she could make it between them in time. The wall of momentum that t-boned her side told her she had.

Seraphinite's giant knee crushed into her hip, and blinking white stars before her vision jigged amongst the dark liquids that splattered across her glasses from the wild creature's lips. Her arms flew in front of her to protect her throat, and Seraphinite bit down hard, shaking her head like a predator would its kill. Threads of hair tumbled around them as Pearl tried desperately to cut at the green gem's spine, but Seraphinite was a beast determined – her teeth pulled Garnet's top arm into a stretch, and her black nails dug deep into the ribs exposed. The fusion gagged, kicking weakly with what parts of her legs were still free. Pearl cried above her, and a blade stabbed through the monster's upper arm, pushed with all the force the tiny gem could muster. It was chaos, and they were losing.

It was said that organic beings, when in their final moments of life, thought of their mothers. Garnet, with one arm unresponsive, her gem pulses frail, and fangs driven into the capsule of her shoulder, could think of nothing but the stars. Beyond the insanity of this moment, and the struggle of her existence, there were quintillions of beads of light, each a sun with worlds cycling it where she might have been allowed to live. Like the thousands of fractured possibilities of her prophesies, the sky, from no matter what loathsome planet she stood upon, remained a hint of what could be. She had never known the embrace of a nourishing earth as her composite gems had, nor the joy of being held by one who adored her more than anything; she was never alone, but, in being the first fusion to gain autonomy, never more lonely. There was no one like her. Were she destroyed, chided her indifferent third eye, never again would there be.

Ruby and Sapphire couldn't stand the idea.

New energy surged across her body and her arms tore themselves free, agony burning through the muscles like liquid flame. A curse burst from her throat, pure retaliation at the monster above her. Pearl mimicked the sound, ripping her sword of its holster of flesh and stabbing again between Seraphinite's shoulder blades. Garnet's gauntlets blazed over her hands and struck out, shoving the green gem with force physics shouldn't have accepted, and she rolled onto her stomach, swallowing bile. The world spun, turning almost as quickly as she did. Pushing her disheveled curls from her face, the fusion blessed her constituents for taking charge of the situation when she could not.

 _Baby,_ grinned Sapphire, momentarily stunning her, _that was all you._

The game had not ended, however. Seraphinite had begun another charge, her arms ripping through the air, eyes locked on the fusion that dare deny her annihilation. Once more her form was a mess, and once more her gaze betrayed no feeling. Pure insanity drove her actions. Garnet readied her stance, palms outstretched, and as the juggernaut plowed into her, gripped the monster's upper arms. She drove a kick downwards when Seraphinite tried to bring one up, snapping her kneecap; the green gem twisted, and the force wrenched Garnet's already compromised shoulder forward. They collapsed onto their knees, and suddenly the battle was one entirely of upper body strength. Though they were of similar stature in that department, the fusion had a handicap. Groaning, she forced as much power through her damaged arm as she could, but it was no to avail – again, she was at the monster's mercy.

The next few seconds were a blur of sound, punctured only by the icy tinkle of silence and the trickle of liquid as rich a blue as the icebergs of Pframden. Garnet had heard the scream to move, and had craned her head was must have been the mere inches necessary not to be decapitated; spirals of her hair floated to the ground, painted with colour. Seraphinite's hand spasmed against her arm. Before her, the blade of a sword gleamed, its sharp point thrust deep into the heart of the green monster's gem. One of the three fighters took a ragged breath, and then the once sane commander exploded into dust.

The sword fell, heavy and singing of a tired victory. A weight followed, collapsing against Garnet's side. She twisted, uninjured arm reaching out to steady the fall, and froze. Her fingers met the serrated inside of Pearl's chest, and her hand became slick with her blood. 

“I didn't hesitate,” the tiny gem giggled, her gaze unfocused. Garnet gaped.

“Pearl-”

“It was my fault. I didn't realize she would reform so fast. I didn't bubble her. I should have bubbled her.”

“Pearl,” the fusion said slowly, turning fully to grip her shoulders. The smaller soldier glanced up. “You need to retreat into your gem.” The words slipped past her, unheard. Instead, she flinched, as though the far off trees had reminded her of something. 

“My diamond was there,” she gasped, and her hands began blindly reaching for the sword handle. Garnet pushed it away, murmuring for the tiny gem's attention. 

“You're in shock,” she explained, knowing full well that Pearl wasn't going to understand, “You need to reform. Pearl, listen to me. I'll... protect Pink Diamond.” That enraptured her. Her wide eyes began to water, and Garnet laid a hesitant hands over hers. “But you need to retreat into your gem. You need to heal.”

The pearl nodded slowly, then closed her eyes. Her form detonated into glittering dust, and the fusion reached quickly for her falling gem. Carefully she brushed it clean, scrubbing away Seraphinite's poisoned plasma. The bottle of acid had long since been lost; she would have to wait until they met the transport to purify it of the infection they now both carried. She glanced at the forest, made to stand, then froze, her thumb notched on the surface of Pearl's gem. Garnet took a slow, quavering breath, dread settling into her stomach, and dared a look down. 

It should have been smooth. 

Anger bubbled up within her – for her own repeated failures and punishments, for the cruelty of such an injury to a gem who had finally obtained a victory for herself, at the evil of the planet, and Pink Diamond's stupid plan. Roaring, she called forth a gauntlet on her mangled arm and slammed it into the fractures of Seraphinite's gem. When she left the clearing, Pearl tucked gently against her breast (bubbling her seemed wrong; she wanted to explain her sacrifice to the diamond firsthand), the only thing left of the green savage was a small crater and a thousand tiny shards of clinochlore.

The missing troops, as luck for Garnet's waning patience would have it, weren't far away. Certainly, parts of her cursed them for not hearing the violence nearby and at the very least investigating and dropping a beacon for rescue before hiding, but likewise she was just as happy to have the mission over as speedily as possible. Despite being a gem of augury, and despite the tired reminders of her corundum mothers that there would only be more sequential trouble for them when she returned to basecamp, the future couldn't come soon enough. She had seen enough trouble from this horrible space rock for three lifetimes, and those had filled their quota simultaneously. Blessedly, a short, bloody jaunt through the brush presented to her the bent back of the same small tiger's eye that had mistaken her for a captain. Though their knowledge of her made her introduction easier, their argument would prove frustrating when she explained the situation and instructed the squadron to drop what they were collecting and follow her; “I thought you weren't our superior.”

“The other half of your team was destroyed by a monster, your commander's been crushed, and these orders come directly from a member of the Homeworld Authority,” the fusion ground out, her jaw clenched, “I can't say I understand your groundless suspicion of my actions, but if you'd like to spend the rest of your life slowly being fractured to death, abandoned to madness on this hellhole of a planet, be my guests.”

That, and the ever-present herd mentality of military gems, did it.

It was Pink Diamond's reaction, not to the eighteen soldiers that Garnet could have smugly presented safe and ready for disinfection, but to the oblong jewel pressed against her chest that the fusion could not have predicted. The commander had been waiting tensely, her large hands fiddling with a thin pair of tweezers from the biological identification kit in the transport, gaze unfocused and lips chewed. Garnet had thought it best to confront her away from her underlings; they were busy frantically dousing their cores in acid anyhow. She let her back and the wall of the (slightly dented) ship shelter them.

“Where is my pearl?” were the first words from the diamond's mouth, unsurprising, given her sharp visual comb-over of the crowd upon their arrival. She gave Garnet a quick glance up and down, noting the torn thigh of her uniform, the awkward angle by which she held her right arm, and the myriad of dried colours drenched across her dark skin. Her eyebrows furrowed, and the following words hissed suspicion. “What did you do?”

The fusion took a slow breath, knowing it could very well be her last, and carefully pulled the pearl from her shirt. Pink Diamond froze, her vivid eyes locked. 

“She was very brave,” Garnet said quietly, placing the gem in the commander's waiting hands, “She saved my life.”

Emotions flickered quickly across the diamond's face, so varied it was dizzying. Anger, and the sound of a sneer, then something like a soothing hum; a short gasp and then a long silence. Her face grew slack, confused, and then, as her thumb carefully traced the deep hole Seraphinite's claw had punctured in the otherwise flawless iridescent surface of Pearl's gem, tight with agony. Her fingertips pressed into the curves of the jewel, as if she could push the calcium inside of it like a putty, and soothe the jagged edges that it should not possess. Her chin tried vainly to lift her head and glare, or shout, or otherwise emblazon Garnet further with the guilt that already nagged her, but the broken pearl held her attention like the grasp of a black hole. The fusion watched, and understood.

Compassion, though it hurt her to decide as much, took a back seat to poignancy. Mindlessly stroking her own gems with her fingers, Garnet whispered, “That feeling is what I'm made of.”

“What,” barked the diamond, her words catching in her throat, “Pain?” 

“No,” she sighed, the phrase as gentle as she could manage, “Need.”

Perhaps it was Pink Diamond's youth that allowed the weakness, or perhaps she, like Garnet, had a world of stressors upon her shoulders that had slowly begun to wear down her sense. It could have been the exhaustion of battle that gave Garnet the voice that spoke the sentiment, or an understanding built on knowing the torture of being less than replaceable versus having more than was realistic thrust in her hands because of her status. Whatever the reason, the fusion felt the desire to honestly say, “I'm sorry for your loss,” and Pink Diamond embraced the craving deep in her heart to sob.

Tears streamed across her flushed cheeks like a river, undeterred by the hand that covered her nose and mouth. Pearl's gem trembled with the shudders of the diamond's body, hunched over as if the grief were ripping her chest apart. She pressed the jewel against her forehead, her breathing shallow, but volume so low not even the ground could hear her whimpers. Garnet guarded her with an iron stance, ready to pulverize the first soldier that dared turn the corner. She swallowed thickly. Ruby and Sapphire quietly acknowledged that they weren't broken, that even a perfect diamond could feel adoration and suffering at the loss of another, and then threw the delight that should have followed the thought away. There was no room for happiness here. 

It was the surprised inhale that convinced Garnet to look, and to mimic. The diamond, startled, held the white gem forward, as if needing the confirmation of another. Its surface, slick with her tears, was exquisite. Not a crack dared blemish its exterior, nor the harsh concavity that had deformed it beyond repair. The gem gleamed in the dim light of the sky, curved face a cascade of faint rainbows. It was beautiful. What should have been a fatal puncture had been healed. 

“Pearl,” Pink Diamond whispered, sniffing shakily, disbelief painting her features, “Wake up.”

There was something – two somethings, surely – inside of Garnet that couldn't help crack a smile at the unadulterated affection that bloomed between the diamond and her right hand gem when Pearl reappeared in an explosion of light and cascade of ribbons. Pink Diamond's hands had hardly freed the soldier's jewel as she reformed; she clutched the sides of her now-physical face, squishing Pearl's cheeks into a positively ridiculous shape. The smaller gem squawked, her astonished expression flushed a deep blue, and stared unblinkingly at her superior, alternating between trying to ask what in the cosmos was happening and relaying something about the fusion. She became immediately silent and still when the diamond pressed their foreheads together.

“Pearl, my Pearl, you're alive,” the diamond murmured, and fresh tears slipped from her lashes, spattering the tiny gem's clothes. 

“My lady,” she mumbled back, tentatively brushing one giant hand with the lean fingers of her own. The tiniest of grins graced both their faces before the diamond straightened, scrubbing her cheeks with her palm. She took a slow, deep breath, and looked to Garnet, determined. The fusion didn't miss the posture in which Pink Diamond had positioned herself; her arms folded behind her back, head slightly downcast. She was, most subtly, presenting the rose-coloured gem on her stomach as tribute. It was one of the oldest and most wholehearted ways to apologize, because should the receiver find the words insincere, they had every right to destroy the presenter's life. Garnet stared.

“Fusion,” she said carefully, then paused. “Garnet. I don't understand you. I don't agree with you. You're manipulative and stubborn.” She hesitated, and then conferred what she didn't know was the first look of consideration the fusion had ever received, “But I want to. I want to know what this is. I want to know your story. I can't promise you protection from Homeworld, but as long as you're in my service, I can allow your illegality.”

Garnet's lungs shuddered as a year of weight fell from her chest, and she closed her eyes.

“That's all I've ever wanted.”

Her third eye, decidedly, was still a liar. Though it had held true in its prophesies of tragedy, of introductions with specific gems, and of her own weaknesses, it failed to present the benefits of the future. Never had her vision foretold the companionship of one of Homeworld's dredges of society, or the accompanying pride, on both their behalfs, in the sword training that Pearl would go on to specialize and excel in (after Garnet's double-handed, half-reversed technique had bested her a few times, of course). Never had it mentioned its use in guiding a rather stuck-in-her-ways diamond towards kinder derivations of Homeworld's orders, or in helping her shed the partially self-imposed stigma of her healing tears. Never had it revealed the place where Garnet would finally feel at home, and where she could run across sandy terrain and laugh because she was alive, and together, and not hunted for simply _being_. Never had it given her the word that Ruby and Sapphire had always so desperately craved for their want of each other, when there was an entire planet that used and embodied the term every day. It presented her with the bad, when there were a quintillion stars' worth of good.

The moment she stood overlooking a Kindergarten with Pink Diamond – who thereafter would ask to be called Rose Quartz, one of the most common and humble gems of Earth – and her augury warned her that the leader's suggested protest (and consequential war) to free the planet she so needed of Homeworld's influence would be only terrible, Garnet told it to shut up. She laid a palm on the large gem's shoulder, smiled, and swore she would follow, and manipulate, her decisions, no matter the danger. Rose laughed, and where future vision presented the threats, Ruby and Sapphire imagined the possibilities.


End file.
